What followed was one very silly, very happy half-hour. Two kids and two adults in the pool, with Mrs McCurdle and Sandra Jefferson watching indulgently from the side.
‘You’d think they were children themselves,’ Mrs McCurdle said placidly. ‘Look at the pair of them. There’ll be wedding bells in town soon-you mark my words.’
‘I’m not disagreeing,’ Sandra told her. ‘It’s obvious they’re in love. It’s just… I wonder if they’ve realised it yet.’
They hadn’t realised anything of the kind. When the two women disappeared, bearing reluctant children with them, Nate and Gemma were left in the pool together. It was like being in the bath together, Gemma thought. It was too darned intimate for words.
‘I should get out. I’m turning into a prune.’
‘I’ll bet you’re not.’ He was floating two feet from her nose. ‘You look pretty good from where I’m floating.’
‘My nose isn’t wrinkled. But you should see my toes.’
For answer he duck-dived-straight underneath her. She felt his hand on her toe and yelped and splashed for the poolside.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Nope,’ he said, surfacing with laughter. ‘You’re not wrinkled. Ticklish, though-definitely ticklish.’
‘Go away.’
‘I’m away.’ He was, too. A whole six feet. ‘Seriously, Gemma-’
‘You’re not serious. You’re never serious.’
‘I am now. And what you’re doing for Milly…it’s a minor miracle.’
‘She’s responding better than I’d hoped.’
‘You’re building her lung capacity almost while we watch.’
‘I hope it helps.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
There was silence then. There seemed nothing left to say. He should get out, Nate thought. This had been a spur-of-the-moment decision-to take a swim-and he had patients waiting. So did Gemma.
But neither of them moved-yet.
‘You haven’t reconsidered…?’
And that broke the silence in no uncertain terms.
‘No, I have not!’ It was a snap and Nate grimaced. He should learn when to shut up.
‘It’s just…it’s going so well.’
‘Yes, it is. So why mess it up with talk of marriage?’
Why indeed? Nate hardly knew.
‘I only thought-’
‘Well, don’t think. Thinking’s dangerous. I never do it unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
‘So how do you operate?’ he asked, fascinated. ‘Without thinking?’
‘I operate on gut instinct. Take Milly. It was a gut feeling that swimming would be good.’
‘Gut feeling backed up with ten years of solid medical training.’
‘There is that.’
‘And what does your gut say about us?’
‘My gut says your idea is crazy.’
‘My gut says it’d work.’
‘Well, there you go, then,’ she said equitably. ‘We have incompatible guts. What better reason for refusing a marriage proposal?’
‘Gemma…’
‘Knock it off, Nate,’ she said. ‘We have work to do. Stop wasting time.’ And she put her head down and stroked out for the steps, strong and sure, leaving him to watch her with ever-increasing confusion.
They had more work to do than they bargained for. At five that afternoon, just as the lines in the surgery were starting to thin, there was a call from the local police.
‘There’s been a plane crash,’ Nate told Gemma, putting his head around her consulting-room door as she wrote a script for Ruby Sawyer, an old lady with Parkinson’s disease and an avid interest in the new doctor. ‘It’s just been rung in. The local police sergeant is on his way there now. All he knows is that it came down in a paddock near Millhouse’s dairy. It might be a false alarm-nothing but a forced landing-but there might be work for both of us. If Graham takes over here, can you come?’
Could she come? A plane crash… ‘Of course.’ She grimaced apologetically at Ruby-whose expression said she’d love to come, too-and was out of her chair before Nate could close the door. She caught him as he was climbing into his car.
‘What sort of plane?
He cast her a look that said he’d expected her to follow in her own car-not be ready in time to come with him. But he was glad that she had. This sounded as if it could be a nightmare. ‘It’s a light plane. Bob, our local police sergeant reckons it might be a Cessna. He got a call from a farmer’s wife a mile away saying she saw it come in low and then heard a crash.’
‘If she heard a crash from a mile away… Dear God…’
‘I don’t think it’ll be pretty.’
It wasn’t.
During the last two weeks Gemma hadn’t once regretted leaving her life in the big city. She regretted it now. Nate pulled up at the gate leading to the dairy. Gemma gazed in horror at the wreck of the plane and thought longingly of all the medical services she’d left behind at Sydney Central.
Where were the fire engines? The ambulances? The paramedics? Where were the cranes and the specialist tow trucks? Where was…everybody?
There was one lone man-the local police sergeant, by the look of his uniform-spraying the smouldering ruin with a fire extinguisher far too small for the job.
Where was the cavalry?
‘Hell, if it goes up in smoke…’ Nate said grimly, and hauled an extinguisher from the back seat. ‘Bring my bag, Gemma.’ And he was off at a run, leaving Gemma to follow.
She brought up the rear but not at a run. She didn’t hurry. She’d learned in her time as an emergency intern that if things weren’t staring her in the face as immediately life-threatening then it was worth taking the time to do an overall assessment. Triage had been drilled into her as a medical student-the sorting of priorities.
Preventing a fire must be the first priority but there wasn’t another fire extinguisher. Which left her free to take stock.
The plane looked as if it had been crop-dusting. A bright sign was still decipherable on its crumpled side. BUZZEM WEEDS. The sign looked absurdly incongruous where it was.
It had crashed right into the dairy, smashing the whole structure. The plane itself was lying upside down on the sheets of galvanised iron that had once been the dairy roof.
Why had it crashed? Surely it hadn’t been heading straight for the dairy. She looked further back from where it must have approached.
And there it was. The reason the plane had crashed. Three hundred yards from the dairy was a row of power lines. Or what had been a row of power lines. The plane had dropped too close to the wires, a pole had been hauled down and the cables were now trailing uselessly on the ground between pole and dairy.
Power lines…
She shouted to Nate, putting all the force she had into her yell. He turned and she pointed to the cables. She didn’t know where they ended or whether they were still live.
Nate recognised her fear at a glance. He grabbed the policeman, signalling to the wires, and they moved away. There was one thing she could do. She lifted her cellphone and dialed the emergency number.
‘There’s a plane crash two miles north of Terama on the Black Hill road. I need the power cut. Now.’
They could do it, she thought. One central switch could well stop a further disaster.
